Peter Snyders

(19*-) Cape Town based playwright, short fiction writer, journalist and poet. An articulate, provocative and popular speaker on literary issues. Trained and working as a laboratory assistant, he was a member of the Belhar Amateur Drama and became founder of and writer/director for Unison Players from 1975. Was also involved with Group 44 as founder(?*) and writer and worked with The Space Theatre. * Started out writing stories and poems, published in various journals. His collection of poems, collected as 'n Ordinary Mens ("An Ordinary person" - Kaaps or Cape Afrikaans) became widely read and discussed.

Snyders is one of the best examples of writers in so-called Kaaps (i.e. the "Cape Afrikaans" of the Cape Flats) and uses it in his poetry and in many of his plays. These include Voor dit gebeur (1975), Lied vir Lisa ("Song for Lisa" , 1979), Political Joke (1979, pub. 1983). Elke Ou Storie (“Every old story” – co-written with Group 44, 197*), Min Genade ("Little Mercy", 1983), Die Drein (197*). Has also written purely English plays, such as The birds and the boys (19*) and Violations (19*), The Final Sting of the Dying Wasp (co-written with Geraldine Aron, Dermod Judge, Russel Savadier, and others, The Space, 197*) **.

Sources

See Astbury, 1979, Smith, 1990, January 1997

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